The present quality information apparatus and method relates, in general to apparatus and method which track and store quality control information generated during the manufacture of a product.
In manufacturing operations, numerous parts or components are joined together into sub-assemblies that are in turn added to other sub-assemblies to complete a final assembly of an article, such as an automobile or vehicle.
Current quality standards require that all quality data, such as time and date of manufacturer, operator ID, torque data, process complete, process stops, retries, etc., for each part of an overall complete assembly be recorded. In certain assembly operations, particularly vehicle assembly operations, sub-assemblies are manufactured in an offline area separate from the main vehicle assembly line. While quality data can be acquired for each subassembly, the sub-assemblies are typically transferred to the main assembly line in a batch, such as in a container of like sub-assemblies or via a conveyor or other transfer device in a consecutive fashion.
Previously, there has been no way to link the quality data of a subassembly built offline from a main assembly line with the quality data of the final product assembly to which subassembly is subsequently joined.